Points of Chaos

Where our heroes find out what they are in for

The story starts with Inquisitor Alexi Romanov’s team landing on Vaxanide at the request of House Socatti, House Lewain, and House Ryr, all of which were experiencing troubles securing their wares and export procedures in lieu of what seemed to be random attacks by follows of Khorne. The attacks had been getting more frequent as well as increasing in size, which is what drew the attention of Inquisition. There we also rumors of members of the traitor legions being spotted, which, in turn, caused the Inquisition to request two space marines for accompaniment.

The team landed and secured a secondary base of operations in the dark of night, meeting up with the heads of the three Houses that requested them the following morning. They were given all of the information the Houses had compiled about their attackers, and accounts of the battlefields condition of those killed. Through careful inspection of the data, and by connecting the dots that those with a less brilliant mind would miss, the team found evidence of Dark Eldar in some of the killings, and what’s more, the Khornites and the Dark Eldar seemed to have been engrossed in their own feud.

Where we left off the heroes had valiantly killed all of the Dark Eldar in a large outpost in the fringes of the forest, which they had located through the use of the Dark Eldar’s own tech. What’s more, they captured someone driving a House Socatti vehicle, and are planning to question both him, and a captured Dark Eldar Haemonculus, in the hopes of finding something of interest from him as well.

Where the team learns to fear the invisible

After securing the Dark Eldar luitenant and the lone House Socatti member at the remote lodge, the team systemmatically turned the site to as close to a Khornite slaughterfield as they could. After the interrogation of the House Socatti runner he was dispatched using the Dark Eldar weaponry, and after the xeno’s interrogation he to was disposed of.

One thing that was noticed was that some of dead Dark Eldar had blotches of necrotised skin. T40m 53rv0 was able to analyze the team’s infected personnel and determine that the virus was from the Warp in origin. It took the combine efforts of Magos Errant 53rv0 and Brother Arquebus to cleanse the blood of Lady Alexi Romanov and Trip Haladay.

The following day the non-space marine members brought the corpse of the Socatti runner to House Socatti. Kyra Socatti was disturbed by the body, and while she was being pumped for information Trip found the glassworks and noticed that a good majority of the works made his mind spin a bit. He liberated a large portion of the Head Master’s worktable when he was called away to be introduced to the Inquisitor. These pieces were inspected by T40m and found to be warp influenced. After there own interrogations, Reyn and his lesser masters were executed, and with some follow-up, the Masters’ homes were searched and relics of some sort of ritual were found. A larger tome was taken by Alexi to be studied later. When it was all said and done roughly 75% of House Socatti was either killed or left in the capable hands of the local Arbites.

While the Socatti was being taken down, the space marines were alerted to the sound of las-fire nearby their secondary hideout. It was a dozen followers of Khorne that seemed to be ex-guardsmen. After a fierce battle, and some warp blood thrown in for good measure, the space marines stood victorious, yet off, as their armor had been breached. They had escaped the first touch of the warp virus, but it seemed the psyker borne warp blood carried the same plague. Given that the area was drenched with the tainted blood, they searched and found the local Adepta Sororitas Abbey to enlist their aid in cleansing the site. The Sisters took care of the area with the oversight of the space marines, and on their way back one of the marines noticed the tracks of more humanoids going towards the battlefield. The allowed the Sisters to head back to their Abbey and they went on ahead, tracking the trail back into the hive’s outskirts. Along the way they encountered a human who had falling behind the rest of his group and was in the final stages of a terrible infection. He was put out of his misery and his body was brought along.

The two teams met outside a broken down hab that the space marines had tracked back to, where Brother Dritan had constructed a simple explosive to level. Everyone inside was killed by the blast and the weight of the hab. Multiple dead bodies were found that showed the same degeneration of the flesh, and it was clear their was a terrible power keeping these bodies alive, as all life functions should have halted a long time prior. More disturbingly, there was evidence of some sort of makeshift lab, which T40m had found to be dedicated to creating more or refining the warp virus that was found earlier. The site was burned to ash, and the first body found was noticed at the last second to be set to burst. Only the Emperor knows how far tainted blood and flesh would have been spread if Dritan had not acted as quickly as he had to secure and destroy the body before it could explode. Alexi found a small flesh-bound book that hinted at the revival of a major daemon of Nurgle, and discussed the possible methods to awaken such a being. The book was burned along with the rest of the bodies and lab equipment.

Where the cadre makes a few friends

The next morning the cadre awoke to their Librarian breaking out in a cold sweat. He had seen that the local Adepta Sororitas’ Abbey was under attack. They knew they had a few hours to get there, and they had setup a meeting with other cultists of Slaanesh. Using the cloaks they had taken from the House Socatti raid, the human sized members took up the cloaks and were the faces to the meeting. They found out that this other group is the ones that will take care of the actual ritual where House Socatti’s job is to find the best site for the summoning. The cadre also found that the other group is going to be bringing roughly fifty people to the summoning.

After the meeting was adjurned, the cadre moved quickly to the Abbey. Along they way a few members saw some red eyes watching them from the woods, which only hastened the team to their destination. When their they were attacked by cultists, demons of Khorne, and four World Eater space marines. Luckily, they had come prepared, and their preparations paid off, and they were able to repel the aggressors with a minimum of losses to their numbers and those of the sisters.

During the battle, they spotted off in the distance a figure that actually finished off one of the injured space marines. It sported a banner that bore a glyph of something chaotic, but none of the team could place it at the time. After some research the team recalled a bit of lore that is whispered in the darker reaches of the imperium of a fifth Ruinous Power, one that embodies the tendency of Chaos to turn on itself. The cadre wasn’t quite sure what to do with this turn of events, and so, for now, they are going to let that play out.

After the Abbey was secure, the cadre took up the trail of the space marines and the demons, as both trails came from the same direction. After following the trail they came to a ruined temple which housed about two squads of World Eaters, as well as a handful of cultists which were doing menial work and keeping open a portal to the warp that was used to summon the heralds of Khorne. The team is now in the middle of determining their tactical options given the overwhelming power they are witnessing.

The ruins int he forest that the Inquisitor’s team had stumbled upon was taken with a relative few casualties. A handful of sisters lent from the Abbey had perished, and more were wounded, but considering their adversary, they were lives well spend. Trip Haladay had lost one of his legs in battle as well, but it was recovered and it was hoped that t40m 53rv0 would be able to work the Omnissia’s will to construct Trip whole again.

It wasn’t all for naught as well. Lady Alexi Romanov had found a psyker whose own skin had been turned into a living document for the ritual. The skin had been more or less pieced together and the Lady Romanov had committed what was there to her memory for further research later. Likewise, the storage of the components for the ritual we discovered by the Space Marines, and was promptly put to the torch.